1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to cubic class puzzles having an overall shape of a regular polyhedron with eight or more plane faces. Each puzzle is comprised of various pieces which rotate in groups around lines joining the puzzle center and the puzzle vertices. Admissible rotations alter the surface configurations. The object and the challenge is to perform twists and turns aimed at restoring the surfaces to their original configuration or to other interesting designs.
2. Description of the Prior Art
This invention generalizes the "Rubik's" Cube (Rubik's Cube is a registered trademark of Ideal Toy Corporation), "Pyraminx" tetrahedron ("Pyraminx" is a registered trademark of Tomy Corporation), and similar cubic puzzles. This invention introduces alternative puzzles having regular polyhedron shapes with eight or more plane faces, and introduces a new range of challenges, and ease of assembly. The following comments distinguish the subject puzzles from the prior art:
The Rubik's Cubes and the polyhedron puzzles considered by Halpern in U.S. Pat. No. 4,453,715, have each of their pivots or axes of rotation (which emanate from the puzzles' core central parts) pointing towards or being attached to centers or center pieces of an external plane face; consequently no corner piece of these polyhedron puzzles is joined to an axis of rotation and is restricted to actually and physically rotate in place relative to the corresponding core central part. Correspondingly, each of the planes of rotation of the puzzles of U.S. Pat. No. 4,453,715, and of the Rubik's Cubes, is always parallel to some external plane face of the corresponding polyhedrons. Each group of external pieces of these puzzles which share a complete external plane face parallel to a plane of rotation can be rotated together as a group relative to the corresponding core central part. The comments in this paragraph also apply to several other available puzzles of the prior art. In contrast, in all the species of the present invention, proper rotations of groups of regular polyhderon puzzle component pieces are always around straight lines which join a vertex (a corner point) and the center of the corresponding overall polyhderon shape. Consequently each plane of rotation in the subject puzzles of this invention must be orthogonal (perpendicular) to a straight line joining a vertex and the geometric center of the overall shape.
Halpern, in his U.S. Pat. No. 4,453,715, has been allowed a generic claim, his claim 1. The external forms of his puzzles are restricted to polyhedrons which are 3-valent (for each vertex there are exactly 3 faces) and which are convex. Furthermore, his claim 1 specifically requires (Column 10, lines 23-25) "a plurality of face components, each of said face components being rotatably mounted on a different one of said mounting means." The class of puzzles considered by Halpern in U.S. Pat. No. 4,453,715, specifically excludes the classes of puzzles introduced here. Here there is a plurality of corner component pieces, each of said corner component pieces being rotatably mounted on a different one of the mounting means or rod (pivots) of rotation.